Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, all come out smelling like roses

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has issued its fourth annual "Who Has Your Back?" report, ranking internet companies on how they respond to government data requests; Snapchat, Amazon, and AT&T sit at the bottom of the ratings.

The report rates 26 internet companies and assigns each as many as six stars, with each star corresponding to what the EFF feels is a privacy best practice when dealing with governments.

The group cautions that the report doesn't cover secret surveillance. The EFF can't rate companies based on things it doesn't or can't know about. But it awarded companies points for demonstrating good practices publicly, such as in the courts or through lobbying efforts.

Some companies scored very well. Apple, Credo Mobile, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Sonic.net, Twitter, and Yahoo! all received six out of six stars, the highest possible rating.

Similarly, LinkedIn, Pinterest, SpiderOak, Tumblr, Wickr, and WordPress each were docked one star because they have no record of resisting government data requests via the courts, and the Internet Archive lost a star because it doesn't publish guidelines explaining how it responds to requests from law enforcement.

Somewhat concerning to see this as it sends the average user very mixed messages. But clearly this is a difficult area to judge/rate...so regardless of rating their is but one sensible approach 'exercise caution at all time and despite whatever one has read/heard'.

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